The Mountains

an aboard would be below, for at that period Captain Selover loved to take the wheel in person, a thick cigar between his lips, the dingy checked shirt wide ope

minous bursts of fractured English from Perdosa. Pulz had nothing to offer, but watched from his pale green eyes. The light shifted and wavered from one to the other as the ship swayed: garments swung; the empt

or why. The doctor puzzled them, a

at, for we ain't a diver among us. It ain't Chinks, for we are crui

mself had the wheel. Discipline,

ed the Mexican, "for dat

hrackles. "Double pay and duff on Wednes

said the Nig

to him wit

nded Pulz, brea

" repeated

eason, Doctor?" as

" insisted

nts in a respect not due them as mere opinions. Subsequently I understood a little more o

claw removed from its socket, whittled and tested, screwed and turned, trying to fix th

, Doctor?" he ask

Nigger shortly.

tly. It was extraordinary, the unquestioning and entire fait

len, or ravished in fair fight. No further soothsaying could they elicit from the Nigger. They followed their

, leaving only Handy Solomon, the Nigger and Pulz, but the order of the day was not on that a

ht some extraordinary garish detective stories. The others contributed sensational literature with paper covers adorned lithographically. By the usual incongruity

ng's lecture, it always ended with the book on alchemy. These men had no perspective by which to judge such things. They accepted its speculations and theories at their face value. Extremely laughable were the

des, and re-entered his cabin at the lapse of the half hour. After he had gone, remained Percy Darrow leaning indolently against the taffrail, his graceful figure swaying with the ship's motion, smoking always the corn-husk Mexican cigarettes which he rolled with one hand. He seemed from that farthest point aft to hold in review the appliances, the fabric, the actions, yes, even the very thoughts, of the e

mon. It was at the end of ten days, on no one of which had the seaman failed to

ed, pulling some object from his pocket, "here's a pipe; present to me; I don't smoke 'em. Twist her halfway, like that,

n looked after him in open amazement. That evening he worked on the socket of the steel hook, and in

ung man, smiling full at him. "